DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.8577#0113
THE CORINTHIAN FIGURE STYLE 93
brilliant development of polychrome figure painting which culminates in the
Chigi vase; contemporaneously, or perhaps even earlier, a totally different off-
shoot, illustrated for us by some fragments from Aegina painted in a mixture
of outline and silhouette, without any added colours; later again, just before
the end of the seventh century, we see the beginning of a new tradition which
makes a modified use of secondary colours (red and pale brown) and experi-
ments freely with outline drawing; lastly, in the second quarter of the sixth
century we find a new development of the polychrome style, based on the
interplay of four principal colours—orange for the background, black, white,
and red for the figures—in which brush-work plays an altogether unpre-
cedented part.
The disturbing influence which lies behind these various and more or less
irregular deviations from the norm is undoubtedly that of free painting—the
art of painting pictures. The Protocorinthian polychrome style is little more
than a translation into miniature of the kind of painting of which we have
actual examples in the Thermon metopes; the metopes are certainly post-
Protocorinthian, but they provide a direct clue to the understanding of the
vases. The one constant element in the later figure styles in vase-painting,
the tendency to substitute outline drawing for incision and silhouette, is
obviously traceable to the same source. The outline technique is proper to the
figure scenes on vases; for filling ornament patterns, and orientalizing subjects
which are proper to vases rather than to pictures, it is never used before the very
last phase of the Corinthian style in the second quarter of the sixth century.
It is therefore not surprising that this technique is much more freely used
on pinakes than on vases; for many of these, especially those which represent
Poseidon and Amphitrite, are clearly reproductions in miniature of paintings on
a large scale.
Ancient writers are unanimous in attributing to Corinth one of the earliest
and most important schools of painting; indeed, it would be no exaggeration
to say that Corinthian painting seems to have been the counterpart of
Sicyonian sculpture. The truth as to the part played by the various
individual artists of whom we hear seems to be obscured by crude and
improbable conjecture; tradition has left us little but the names of some
of the Corinthian primitives. There are, however, isolated fragments of
evidence which bring us nearer to tangible reality. Strabo saw pictures
by Kleanthes and Aregon of Corinth (the former, one of the 'inventors' of
painting), at Olympia.1 One was a picture of the birth of Athena; among the
gods was Poseidon holding a tunny in one hand.2 Another was of the cap-
ture of Troy. These were by Kleanthes. The picture by Aregon was 'Artemis
flying on a griffon'; this, however, was probably not an archaic picture.
1 Straboviii,3,12 (343); cf. Athenaeus viii,346 b,c. Roscheriii, 2857; and Reinach, Receuil Milliet, 67,
2 Compare pinakes such as A.D. i, pi. 7, 24; note 7.
brilliant development of polychrome figure painting which culminates in the
Chigi vase; contemporaneously, or perhaps even earlier, a totally different off-
shoot, illustrated for us by some fragments from Aegina painted in a mixture
of outline and silhouette, without any added colours; later again, just before
the end of the seventh century, we see the beginning of a new tradition which
makes a modified use of secondary colours (red and pale brown) and experi-
ments freely with outline drawing; lastly, in the second quarter of the sixth
century we find a new development of the polychrome style, based on the
interplay of four principal colours—orange for the background, black, white,
and red for the figures—in which brush-work plays an altogether unpre-
cedented part.
The disturbing influence which lies behind these various and more or less
irregular deviations from the norm is undoubtedly that of free painting—the
art of painting pictures. The Protocorinthian polychrome style is little more
than a translation into miniature of the kind of painting of which we have
actual examples in the Thermon metopes; the metopes are certainly post-
Protocorinthian, but they provide a direct clue to the understanding of the
vases. The one constant element in the later figure styles in vase-painting,
the tendency to substitute outline drawing for incision and silhouette, is
obviously traceable to the same source. The outline technique is proper to the
figure scenes on vases; for filling ornament patterns, and orientalizing subjects
which are proper to vases rather than to pictures, it is never used before the very
last phase of the Corinthian style in the second quarter of the sixth century.
It is therefore not surprising that this technique is much more freely used
on pinakes than on vases; for many of these, especially those which represent
Poseidon and Amphitrite, are clearly reproductions in miniature of paintings on
a large scale.
Ancient writers are unanimous in attributing to Corinth one of the earliest
and most important schools of painting; indeed, it would be no exaggeration
to say that Corinthian painting seems to have been the counterpart of
Sicyonian sculpture. The truth as to the part played by the various
individual artists of whom we hear seems to be obscured by crude and
improbable conjecture; tradition has left us little but the names of some
of the Corinthian primitives. There are, however, isolated fragments of
evidence which bring us nearer to tangible reality. Strabo saw pictures
by Kleanthes and Aregon of Corinth (the former, one of the 'inventors' of
painting), at Olympia.1 One was a picture of the birth of Athena; among the
gods was Poseidon holding a tunny in one hand.2 Another was of the cap-
ture of Troy. These were by Kleanthes. The picture by Aregon was 'Artemis
flying on a griffon'; this, however, was probably not an archaic picture.
1 Straboviii,3,12 (343); cf. Athenaeus viii,346 b,c. Roscheriii, 2857; and Reinach, Receuil Milliet, 67,
2 Compare pinakes such as A.D. i, pi. 7, 24; note 7.